The ‘Twist’ range gives a swirly bokeh effect in the background, and there are other options too. The ‘Composer’ range allows you to select a specific point in the image to be in focus while softening the remainder. Their lenses offer lots of creative blur effects. Lensbaby are well known for their special effect lenses. Often specifically used to blur the background for a nice effect. Many portrait and wedding photographers will have an 85mm portrait lens with an F-stop in this range. Macro lenses are excellent for this effect. Lenses with an F stop of 2.8 to 1.4 give a very narrow depth of field, which highlights the subject and softens the background. Smearing petroleum jelly on a filter screwed to the front of the lens is reasonably common for an effective soft blur effect. Stretching pantyhose across the front of the lens is also cheap and effective. I know flower/macro photographers who wrap gauze fabric around the front of their lens for an alternative soft effect and to add some color as well. Or wrap it around the front leaving a small opening to shoot through. To enhance it, even more, some people stretch plastic film in front of the lens. Intentional camera movement is popular with stands of trees, soft beach scenes, and fields of flowers. Photography can be playful, creative, stylistic and artistic as well. It may have stark lines representing a trunk and branches, or colorful blobs in the background. It may be rendered beautifully with every leaf painted as an individual element. Painters can represent a tree in different ways depending on their technique and style. Therefore if we choose to use it more creatively to give our pictures a different feel or mood, we are enhancing a natural element in our world.
So its natural for blur to be present in our images. What happens to the background? If you shift focus to the background instead, your hand blurs.ĭistant mountains are blurred as we physically cannot focus clearly that far away. There are so many other ways to see the world and present our images with our unique creative viewpoint. If that means smearing stuff on a filter in front of your lens, then smear-away :).īring your hand as close to your face as you can, so you can still focus on it. What about ICM – Intentional Camera Movement? Or Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese/Zen aesthetic of the beauty of imperfection. What if we want even more softness in our image, including the subject? Maybe we want the background sharp, and the subject blurred – a technique often used in some street photography styles. Not every shoot offers those situations, nor can everyone afford the best lens. Such as decent quality lenses, a lot of distance behind the subject to the background, and good soft light. However, the reasons they do so are perfectly valid.īut for bokeh to work well, you need to have some specific elements present and happening. It amuses me that many photographers believe all images ‘must be tack sharp.’ Still, they are out there taking photos of birds, portraits or wedding shots with very soft blurred bokeh backgrounds. It may be a subtle difference for some, but it is a difference. This article addresses the photographers deliberate creative choice to use softness or blur in a picture. NOTE: To clarify, sometimes an image ‘just is’ out of focus for whatever reason. While it is an entirely valid choice – and I fully support the decision to shoot their images that way – it is not the ‘only’ choice.įor those of us who want to explore different creative styles, have fun with different lenses and push the boundaries of what photography can allow us to do in creating art, there are plenty of alternatives. There is a perception amongst some photographers who are very invested in the technicalities of shooting, that absolutely every image has to be 100% sharp. The first comment when I posted it on Facebook was ‘it would look better if it were all in focus.’ Only the front of the blueberry is in focus. It has a very narrow depth of field (DOF). I have an image of a blueberry shot on the end of a spoon with my macro lens.
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